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Abrams is an avid Star Wars fan but he also knows how to make a decent movie.

Again, as has been mentioned many times in this gigantic thread, just because someone is a fan of Star Wars, it doesn't make them a good choice to direct a Star Wars movie. There are a lot of directors that are fans of Star Wars. Some of them are directors because of Star Wars. You can't just single out J.J. and say "hey, he's a Star Wars fan so he's a perfect choice!" Because he isn't.

Star Trek 2009 did not suck, I'm sorry but it just didn't. Even RLM loved it.

First of all, RLM's opinion doesn't matter to me in any way since he dislikes a series of prequel films that I enjoy a lot. And his positive review of Star Trek is that it's exciting and doesn't make you think. i.e. the guy has a short attention span and just likes to watch explosions and chase sequences and doesn't actually care about how bad the plot is and doesn't want to think about it either. Though of course because he dislikes the prequels, he'll sit there for hours on end talking about those movies. He's a hypocrite and nobody should care what he thinks.

It has a RT rating higher than Wrath of Khan, and was a huge critical and commercial success.

Because he made a movie for people who weren't fans of Star Trek. He made Fast and Furious in Space and the brain dead masses went to see it. I'm shocked by this revelation. Doesn't make it a good movie. A lot of people went to see the Twilight films and they made a ton of money. Are those good movies? Hardly.

I didn't say "no true Star Trek fan".
I made no fallacious argument. Are there Star Trek fans who like it? Sure. Are they crazy? Yes.
But clearly, J.J., as someone who is not a fan of Star Trek, made a movie that would appeal to people who have not previously liked Star Trek. That's a fact. I think he even says it in multiple interviews. And many critics gave that as their reason for liking the movie.
QED

Wow. A lot of the fanboys are pretty butt hurt about JJ. I don't really have a problem with him. I was a huge Lost fan, though I know he was only involved in the beginning of that show.

Overall I've liked his films. Super 8 was cool to see, but ultimately forgettable as far as story goes. ST was good as a movie, but was definitely outside the normal box of Trek. I doubt that will be the case with SW, as there will be too many other hands in the pot for him to have too much control.

Even at this point though, I have no question in my mind that it will turn out better than the PT. The story can go wherever the writers want this time, instead of things having to fall in line with the original canon so much. In general, it's easier to write sequels than prequels, so I think we are all in for a fun ride when it finally comes to pass.

Look, don't say that you can't like Star Trek pre-JJ Abrams and also like JJ Abrams Star Trek. That's an absurd argument. First off, Abrams Star Trek has a social message: It's about two different people, Kirk and Spock, from different cultures and world views coming together. But to be honest, Star Trek is NOT always Guy With Black On One Side of Face vs Guy With White On Other Side of Face Hit You Over the Head social consciousness morality plays. Is "Spectre of the Gun" from the Original Series anything more than just an excuse to have a western episode? "The Squire of Gothos" is basically just a reason to do lots of wacky stuff. "Trouble With Tribbles" is a straightforward comedy episode and doesn't want to be anything else. This continues on throughout the series: TNG Parallels is a mind-bender alternate universe tale which, hey look, that's what Star Trek 2009 is. TNG "A Fistful of Data's" is literally an excuse to have Data in a cowboy outfit all over the place. DS9 "Little Green Men" is a time travel story about alternate history affected by time-travelers from Star Trek future and, wouldn't you know, that is what the main plot of Abrams' Star Trek. Hell, DS9's "The Holodeck tried to kill me again" episode "Our Man Bashir" wants to be nothing more than a Bond parody with the magic holodeck excuse thrown in there to let the cast overact - and it's awesome just because it simply wants to be that. Voyager has the episode "Macrocosm" that is basically just a riff on "Aliens" that has Janeway walking around in a literal tank-top like Ellen Ripley (which is also like how "First Contact" plays out, it's half a time-travel story, half a riff on "Aliens" with the Borg). Enterprise has Mirror Darkly which is a two-parter that takes a piece of continuity from the original series and just runs with it, and the cast is clearly having a blast.

The list is endless, and this all goes back to the original series, Star Trek is meant to shift and be molded into any genre. Hard sci-fi, joke, war movie, character study, all of these things. There is no simple way to define Star Trek because Star Trek is not simply Just One Thing.

It looks to me like a pretty transparent effort to build up some PR mythology prior to the release. "Abrams didn't want to do it, but then we showed him the story. And it was sooooo good he couldn't turn us down."

That makes for a much better press release than "Abrams didn't want to do the movie, but then we air dropped a shipping pallet stacked 6 feet high with cash into his back yard."

The list is endless, and this all goes back to the original series, Star Trek is meant to shift and be molded into any genre. Hard sci-fi, joke, war movie, character study, all of these things. There is no simple way to define Star Trek because Star Trek is not simply Just One Thing.

The Mirror Universe is pretty much a f#@$%& up place where everything is upside down, everyone is a traitor, murderer - overall very bad person. I can imagine wars starting all the time and out of nowhere.
Star Trek has always embraced the idea of time travel, parallel realities and such, but those things were established over many, many episodes and series.
The movies, however, all followed a straight line. Yes, we had time travel in 4 and 7 and 8, but the timeline was still the same (or so it seemed).

They couldn't really bring back the cast from TOS, because they're too old and some, unfortunately, are no longer among us.
The TNG cast was old too, too old to make a new movie series with them. And the TNG movies weren't that great (except 8, which was decent). And the TNG movies, along with Star Trek Enterprise were some of the reasons the franchise went south around 2004.
We're left with the Voyager and DS9 cast, both with potential, but their adventures were already shown on TV and the cast wasn't young enough either to make a 2009 movie, plus the new ones afterwards.

So they had no choice but to go back to the original characters, but with a new cast. Completely remaking the TOS movies was not a very good idea. Knowing that a 100% copy-paste isn't possible and that any changes will be disliked by the ST fans, they went with the "it's an alternate reality" thing. And it works and makes sense in the Star Trek universe.
Now, could the 2009 movie have been better? Oh yes, especially in case of the villain, who I consider to be very, very weak.
But other than that they did a good job at bringing Star Trek back to the theaters and making it more accessible for the non-trek audience.
If the 2009 movie would have been a failure, then that could have represented the end of Star Trek for at least 10 years. I don't think if anyone wanted that to happen.

But the point is that the "remake" was a necessary evil to keep a dying franchise alive. A franchise commercially killed by the last TNG movie and the last TV series.

Since Star Wars is still a commercial success, I am confident that a remake or a movie involving time travel or alternate realities is not going to happen. For one thing those things are not part of the SW lore and secondly there is no reason for it to happen, since the situation is very different from Star Trek back before the 2009 movies' release.
So what JJ did to Star Trek 2009 in case of the storyline and characters is very, very unlikely going to happen with the Sequel Trilogy.
He may keep his visual style (insert lens flares joke here), but I don't see a reason to fear that he will drastically change the Star Wars lore. After all, the story treatments are still written by Lucas.

I only have a few concerns - the villain (looking at you, Star Trek 2009), excessive use of flashbacks to tell the backstories of the characters and that the visual style is going to be very different from the previous 6 movies (just because I like consistency, especially in a saga).

It looks to me like a pretty transparent effort to build up some PR mythology prior to the release. "Abrams didn't want to do it, but then we showed him the story. And it was sooooo good he couldn't turn us down."

That makes for a much better press release than "Abrams didn't want to do the movie, but then we air dropped a shipping pallet stacked 6 feet high with cash into his back yard."

Yeah, but it Lincoln Oscar hype right? The THR piece is just one Lincoln Oscar ad, with a sugary, hit-******, Star Wars layer on the surface.

I love this thread. Very insightful opinions. I think that in the end, this new trilogy is going to have a power that the prequels did not. It's probably going to feel more like the SW we know and love because it kind of continues the story from ROTJ. Perhaps even include some of the same characters and actors. This fact alone, for most fans, is going to feel powerful. Us older fans, anyway. Yes it could be a disaster but at least some elements are bound to sit well, just by it's nature.

So they had no choice but to go back to the original characters, but with a new cast. Completely remaking the TOS movies was not a very good idea. Knowing that a 100% copy-paste isn't possible and that any changes will be disliked by the ST fans, they went with the "it's an alternate reality" thing. And it works and makes sense in the Star Trek universe.
Now, could the 2009 movie have been better? Oh yes, especially in case of the villain, who I consider to be very, very weak.
But other than that they did a good job at bringing Star Trek back to the theaters and making it more accessible for the non-trek audience.
If the 2009 movie would have been a failure, then that could have represented the end of Star Trek for at least 10 years. I don't think if anyone wanted that to happen.

But the point is that the "remake" was a necessary evil to keep a dying franchise alive. A franchise commercially killed by the last TNG movie and the last TV series.

Since Star Wars is still a commercial success, I am confident that a remake or a movie involving time travel or alternate realities is not going to happen. For one thing those things are not part of the SW lore and secondly there is no reason for it to happen, since the situation is very different from Star Trek back before the 2009 movies' release.
So what JJ did to Star Trek 2009 in case of the storyline and characters is very, very unlikely going to happen with the Sequel Trilogy.
He may keep his visual style (insert lens flares joke here), but I don't see a reason to fear that he will drastically change the Star Wars lore. After all, the story treatments are still written by Lucas.

I only have a few concerns - the villain (looking at you, Star Trek 2009), excessive use of flashbacks to tell the backstories of the characters and that the visual style is going to be very different from the previous 6 movies (just because I like consistency, especially in a saga).

Coupla interesting things about the Star Trek flick, and some labeled it a cheat, but track down the "Countdown" mini-series that was released before the flick came out it had input from the screenwriters and it's a fantastic read for Trek geeks, it's entirely set in the TNG-era and puts Nero and Spock and the TNG crew at the forefront of the prologue of the story. (Also it recons The Narada as being a semi-souped up with Borg technology, which is a neat twist). Now it's fair to cry "Foul! Antagonist development in a comic book!" but I think that's just being a killjoy. Great read and makes Nero a stronger bad guy in the flick. Totally canon to me.
I don't think there will be any time-travel things in Star Wars at all (although I do get the feeling the EU might be in for a somewhat similar style reboot to get it to fit in with Ep. 7 but that'll be all relegated to tie-in media). Although I will admit that the Star Trek movie kind of tried to cheat by calling it an "alternate reality" when, in every single Star Trek story ever previous to that, time-travel would wipe out timelines, going all the way back to "City on the Edge of Forever". Hell, there's even a time-travel police that popped up in "Voyager" ("Relativity", fantastic episode, BTW). For all intents and purposes in the Star Trek movie that is out, and going by previous Star Trek time-travel logic, the main timeline was wiped out. But the writers do insist that it created a parallel reality (Which does conform to more recent theories about time travel.) Me? I'm good either way. Not as if anyone was doing anything with the "Prime" timeline, y'know what I mean?

As for Abrams style, I mentioned a few pages back, look at Super 8. He's trying to be Speilberg in that movie in a lot of ways, mostly in visual sense, and does a damn fine job of it with his style flourishes kept to a minimum. I'm totally cool with how he shoots Star Trek, alternate universe and the fun fact that Star Trek can change in a lot of ways, but I'm fairly certain in Star Wars it'll look and feel like what we've seen before. I could go for a lens flare or shaky cam here or there, though. Could be fun.

Actually agree with Pine, Abrams should jump back into Star Trek when Ep. 7 is done, and I'm fine with Pine and Co. kidnapping him. I think it could be interesting for the Star Wars ST to swap out directors each flick (which is the sense I'm getting) so he doesn't have to man ep. 8 & 9. Also I do think Abrams has something really special with the whole Star Trek universe and the cast they've assembled. It's his outsider perspective, along with some hardcore Trek geeks thrown into the mix, that gives it the unique peanut butter and chocolate flavour that makes it so much a distinctive take.

Yes, I like both Star Trek and Star Wars (any and all versions). I mean, tie me down and put a gun to my head A) I'd wonder why you're being so damn hostile B) Star Wars, obviously. But I will admit it is kind of like cheering for both the Yankees and the Red Sox, or the Habs and the Leafs, etc.